


just grab my hand (and don't ever drop it)

by lucylikestowrite



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Community: femslashex, F/F, post season two, slightly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4991122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucylikestowrite/pseuds/lucylikestowrite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's more broken than she knew, because Jemma had become a part of her and she hadn't even noticed it happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just grab my hand (and don't ever drop it)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monanotlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/gifts).



> I reallly hope you like this <3

The gap between what is right and what is easy has never seemed wider to Jemma. Because the thing is, loving Skye from afar is unbearably hard. It hurts and it aches and it's relentless and it terrifies her how much she feels, how much she realised she felt after Skye nearly died. And loving Fitz is easy. It's predictable and nice and it fits in a box and she loves him overwhelmingly, loves him more and longer than almost anyone, just... not like that. But it's easy; it's so easy to pretend she does. It's so simple to take the road everyone expects her to. And so she does. She lets him asks her on a date and makes herself says yes. She knows what she's doing is wrong but it's so easy to tell herself that he loves her and she loves him and they love each other in the right way and that nothing could go wrong. It's so easy to tell herself that her love for Skye is hopeless, that it's sadness instead of joy, that she almost manages to make herself believe it. She takes the easy route and tries not to hate herself, but in the last moments before everything goes black, before she is thrown into the unknown, she knows what she did was not fair and not kind, not kind to anyone - least of all herself - and not right.

\--

Skye knows something is wrong; she can feel it. She knows it long before they watch back the camera footage of the room Jemma was last seen in, long before Fitz blushes bright red and fast forwards past the conversation he had with her. These were not good vibrations. And when she watches the Monolith engulf Jemma, a gasp escapes her lips before she can stop it, a hand flies to her mouth, tears prick at her eyes, and a voice at the back of her head whispers that she was too late, that she shouldn’t have waited, and she sits, confused as to why her heart feels frozen.

It is only when everyone except she and Fitz have left - when Fitz is rewatching the video painstakingly, when he lets her see the whole tape, and they see that he opened the catch, and he puts his head in his hands and doesn't look up again; when she hears what he and Jemma were talking about and something in her stomach drops - that she realises what the voice in her mind meant, that she is jealous of Fitz and that she's devastatingly broken. She's more broken than she knew, because Jemma had become a part of her and she hadn't even noticed it happening. Jemma became a part of her and now that part has been ripped away, not once, but twice, without Skye even realising it was happening until it was long done, and now there's a gaping wound where Jemma was.

She can't even console Fitz any more, can’t bring herself to because she wants what he almost had so much, and if she gets too close she'll let that slip (she needs to tell someone), and she can't because that secret is hers and now will always be hers, never anyone else's, and she learns that she has discovered the worst time to realise your love for someone.

\--

She finds that she doesn't even want to be Skye any more, not when Skye was the one who loved Jemma, who maybe had a chance with her - a chance for something, anything - if she'd realised sooner, who let that chance go and let everything go. So she goes by Daisy; Daisy Johnson, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent, Inhuman, Quake. Skye is someone from the past, someone who fell in love and didn't notice, someone who was saved but was too blinded by the light to notice her saviour. Daisy isn't. She cuts her hair and tries not to listen when everyone tells her how much she looks like Jemma looked (not least because the past tense hurts and she hates it). All she wanted to do was be rid of this terrible weight on her head, but when she looked at herself in the mirror afterwards, braced against the sink, scissors in hand, eyes wild, she realised that she saw Jemma staring back at her, and it broke her a little more.

She figures the best way forward is not to think, so she doesn’t. In the daytime, she trains, be it with Bobbi, Hunter, Mack - she doesn’t care. She just needs someone to punch and not ask her about her feelings - which is what happens if she’s with Fitz. He wants to talk and it’s too much, so she avoids him, and feels bad about it, but still avoids him. Every day she has a better hold over her powers and every day she feels more ready to lead Caterpillars - but only because every day she gets better at convincing herself that she’s okay.

Which she isn’t, not by a long way, and she isn’t going to be for a long time. But everyone except Fitz seems to have moved on. Jemma died and they all grieved for the first couple of months and then seemed to go back to normal, and while she feels like she should move on with them, while she feels almost as though she has no right to grieve like this, like this is Fitz's domain, she can't move on, and she still hurts.

\--

Jemma doesn't know where she is. Or when she is. She can remember Fitz and the Monolith and everything before that, but after that there's nothing. It is easily diagnosable as retrograde amnesia, but for some reason that doesn't make it any less unsettling. Around her, giant in the silence, there are trees. The sun is high and blistering in the blue sky, and below her there is...

At her feet there is scorched mud. Radiating out from under her is a shockwave etched in the dirt. However she got here, wherever here is, it was with a bang. And as she stands there, unsure of what to do next, the silence is broken. From somewhere roughly in front of her, there is a faint crashing noise.

The noise gets louder, and louder, and something in her mind twitches, shifts, but she ignores it, and before she can even think about moving, figures are bursting into the clearing, and all she can do is stand frozen and shocked, as agents in tactical gear fan out and point guns at her from all angles.

Then she can hear someone telling them to stand down, someone shouting her name and pushing through the ranks and all of a sudden Skye is running towards her, and the noise in her mind gets louder, and then her arms are wrapped around her, and Skye is hugging her like she never wants to let go, and it feels wonderful.

Eventually she does, but only a little, her arms still resting on Jemma’s, her eyes wild and searching. “It’s really you. None of the others thought it could be, but I told them. I told them it would be you.” Jemma doesn’t have time to process what she means, still trying to push down the noise she is hearing, before Skye is pulling out a walkie-talkie.

“It’s her. Converge on my location. We’re bringing her home,” she says, smiling widely.

Through the radio, Jemma hears, “Copy that, Johnson.”

“You’re Johnson now?”

“A lot’s changed in the last six months, Jemma. But you can still call me Skye, if you want. Fitz still does, sometimes.”

Something twists in Jemma’s stomach. Six months? But she can almost ignore it, because a shadow has passed over Skye’s face, and she rocks backwards slightly, one of her hands dropping away from Jemma, and she notices the lack of the touch intensely.

“He’ll be here soon. We all split up.”

At this, Skye moves away altogether (although she's sure Skye's fingertips linger for just a second) and Jemma is left feeling as though something important just happened, but she’s not entirely sure what.

\--

No-one can seem to find anything wrong with Jemma apart from the memory loss, and even after she insists she examine herself, sure that something is wrong, she finds nothing. So she goes back to work, uneasy, a little terrified of the persistent buzzing that seems to be at the back of her mind constantly, but back at work all the same.

And it makes her feel better, makes her feel a little more normal. As normal as she can be ignoring Fitz again, which at this point almost feels like business as usual, but she hasn't been able to look at him properly since he tried to ask her out again, him stuttering and stumbling and so earnest, her willing it to end and silently thanking everything when Skye walked into the lab. She feels shit about it but saying anything to him would be lying and lying by omission seems better than outright being dishonest to him.

But work is good, because work stops her from thinking like that. It stops her from thinking about Fitz or Skye or where she was and what happened to her. Biochemistry is still biochemistry, even if the scope of what she studies has widened considerably since she was at university.

When she is assigned to Skye and the Caterpillar program, at first she is reluctant. Despite her feelings for Skye, an aversion to inhumanity still hangs over her, and although she had believed that she had cured herself of it, she thinks perhaps her encounter with the Monolith brought it back. But eventually the need to look out for Skye overwhelms her, and so she finds herself behind a reinforced glass window, Skye geared up, with her hands pointed at a thick cement wall.

But when Skye's jaw sets and her fingers twitch, something explodes in Jemma's mind, blinding her. She drops the clipboard in her hand and pushes through the door to the training room. From far away she can hear a shout and a million miles away she can see the air rippling as Skye's powers move towards her, right towards her, until they are directly in front of her, and she throws her hands up and the wave dissipates immediately. She’s not doing anything (is she doing something?) but her hands are glowing horribly red, and Skye is running towards her, her face fearful.

When Skye reaches her, Jemma's head is still burning; before she knows what she is doing she is gripping Skye's arms, fingers wrapped around her forearms, digging in, and Skye's face turns from fear to pain in a second. Jemma looks down in horror, and only has time to see red snaking up Skye's veins before she feels a burst of power, and her head splits open again as she is thrown away from Skye violently, blacking out as she hits the floor.

\--

Skye recoils backwards, the pain receding enough to hear the terrible thud of Jemma's body against the ground. She hadn't meant to push her away with that much force, but it had seemed involuntary, and in that moment she hates what she has become a little.

For the next few seconds she is frozen, processing everything that has just happened, and then she snaps out of it, moving towards Jemma once again, momentarily wondering how long she can spend running after this girl before someone else notices. She can’t see anything visibly wrong, and as she gets closer, Jemma stirs, eyelashes fluttering, propping herself up. When Skye reaches her and offers a hand, she visibly shies away, her eyes wide.

“What are you doing? Let me help you.”

“I just nearly killed you and you’re trying to get near me again?” Jemma is trying to sound incredulous, but Skye can hear the wobble in her voice.

“What? You couldn’t hurt a fly, Jem, let alone me.” Skye laughs, nervously, as she remembers the burning in her veins only thirty seconds ago.

When Jemma next speaks there is something in her eyes that is hardened steel. “I remember everything. Another thirty seconds and you would’ve been dead.”

\--

When Skye finds Jemma eventually, she is curled up in the corner of the rec room, tear tracks marking her face, hands curled up in fists, arms pulling her legs in towards herself. She looks up as Skye walks in, grimacing, her hands flying to clutch at her head, then balling back up into fists.

“I can go- I just.” Skye pauses, sighing. “The last thing you said to me was kind of ominous.”

“Don’t go,” Jemma puts a finger to her temple, rubbing. “Now that I know what’s causing it, I can ignore it. Kind of.” She looks down. “What I said was true, I could’ve. I know I can.”

Skye sits down next to her, noticing how Jemma shifts just ever so much to the right to avoid touching her, not able to take her eyes off of the gap, this tiniest of gaps between them. Jemma sees her staring. “I don’t know if I could control it if you touched me. I remember that; I remember that I didn’t have it under control and they told me it was better that way.” She goes quiet, trembling slightly, threading fingers through each other over and over again, as if she is trying to rid herself of something.

They stay like that for what seems like hours, Skye silent and Jemma silent and Jemma’s breathing slowly steadying, until she opens her mouth and seems almost surprised that words are coming out. “They wanted me to hate you. The Kree wanted me to hate all of you. They needed me to. That’s the way the weapon works - it has to hate inhumans enough to want to destroy them all, want to use the powers it’s been given. Except I didn’t, I didn’t hate you and no matter what they did to me, no matter how many times they hurt me and healed me and starved me and just left me alone for days and maybe weeks, and told me it was all your fault, I couldn’t. You’re my… friend, you’re one of my best friends. So they put this thing in my head.” She almost spits it out. “This thing that’s been bugging me ever since I got back, every time you were near. And I didn’t know what it was, and then when I saw you using your powers, it was like someone had flipped a switch in my mind, and I wasn’t in control.” She’s crying again and it’s horrible. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but something made me, I don't want to think it was be but I think it was, because my head hurt so much, Skye.”

This is the worst Skye has ever seen her; it is like she is falling apart in front of her eyes and she can’t even hold her together. Jemma’s head is down, and Skye can’t help it, she moves a hand to her shoulder - and then hastily moves it away when Jemma’s head snaps her, her palm rapidly unfurling and glowing dark red.

Skye gets up, tears pricking at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t- You need someone who can actually help. I'll get Fitz. You need someone like him. I’m not helping, I’m just… making it worse.”

\--

Skye’s face is close enough for her hair to be tickling Jemma’s cheek, and she is smiling in between kisses, beaming down at Jemma, and everything feels so, so right, and Jemma doesn’t even know they got here, but they’re here, Skye’s mouth on hers, and her skin next to Jemma’s and it’s perfect; it’s quiet and calm and everything is dusky pink, like the sun is rising in this very room, and Jemma wouldn’t be surprised if it really was. Skye leans back slightly, opening her mouth as if to say something, but Jemma shakes her head and places a hand on her waist, pulling her back in. She closes her eyes, a contented smile on her face as Skye's fingers brush her lips, a thumb wiping along her cheekbone. She brushes a strand of hair off Jemma's face and leans in again, peppering kisses on Jemma's neck.

Then Skye makes the smallest of sounds - like the air has just been knocked out of her lungs, and Jemma opens her eyes to Skye crying. The hand that she reaches out to wipe them away is glowing red - was her hand where the pink had been coming from? - and her other hand is pressed on Skye’s chest, light radiating out from underneath it. Skye’s mouth is open in wordless pain, her hands scrabbling over Jemma’s, but no matter what Jemma does, she can’t move it, all she can do is watch as red spreads through Skye’s body, pulsing through her hand.

Then it is over, and as Skye slumps against her, the light in Jemma’s hands fades.

She wakes up crying, and can’t get back to sleep for fear of what awaits her.

\--

Jemma walks into the lab the next morning, a mug in one hand, head buried in work already, trying to forget the night before. It is only when she sees something move in the corner of her eye that she looks up to see that Skye is there, waiting, leaning on a work surface. “You know, you said before that you couldn’t control it yet. That means you could be able to control it at some point? And maybe even get rid of it, right?”

Jemma ducks her head. She wants to believe it’s possible, needs to believe it - but she doesn’t know if she can.

“Jemma. Jemma? Look at me.” She does, and as she holds her gaze, Skye’s eyes are wide and full of hope. “We can do this. Together. I’ll spend as much time getting zapped by you as I have to if it means getting you back as a friend.”

“No, I can’t do that to you. I’m never going to be able to control it.”

Skye smiles, her gaze moving downwards. “You’re controlling it right now.”

“Pardon me?” She follows Skye’s eyes, noticing the hand on her arm for the first time. The second she sees it, she can feel the energy inside her rising, but for the first time she allows herself to smile, just a little bit. “Okay. We can try.”

 --

And they do try. Every minute that Skye isn’t out on a mission, recovering inhumans, every minute that Jemma isn’t in the lab, as far away from said inhumans as possible, is spent working together. Sometimes alone, sometimes with the others - but always horrible. Most of the time once she activates her powers they stop working, but sometimes they don’t, sometimes Skye persuades Jemma that she’s okay going on.

It is terrifying, because the darkness from Jemma’s hands that snakes up Skye’s arms doesn’t seem to have any permanent effect, at least it hasn’t so far, but they have no way of knowing whether that will change.

The thing is, it seems to be working. After a week Skye’s hand on hers doesn’t immediately provoke a reaction. After a month, the noise in her head subsides when she tells it to. The next week, she summons the power voluntarily. A month after that, she almost feels like she is back to normal; she can spend time with Skye and isn’t hurting her any more, but she knows she isn’t cured, isn’t healed, because the only reason Skye is safe is because Jemma uses up every spare ounce of energy controlling herself.

It’s excruciating, spending all this time with her, loving her even more than she did before, if that’s even possible - and yet being further away than ever.

And then one day it’s all too much. They’ve been working together for hours - Skye had insisted on continuing working together no matter how much Jemma told her she could control it, that she didn’t want to keep hurting her. Jemma is tired and losing concentration; she’s lost control three times in the past hour - and is sweating through the tank top that Skye had persuaded her was more practical for this sort of thing than blouses - and she just wants to stop.

“I’m hurting you.”

Skye shrugs. “You’ve been hurting me every day for the past two months. What’s different today?”

“Why are you still doing this?"

"Because you need me to."

And that is all the encouragement Jemma needs, something burns inside of her but this time in a good way. Her hand fits perfectly behind Skye's neck, and as she crashes forward, their bodies colliding as they fall back against the wall, she kisses her, thoughts of consequences long forgotten.

It is urgent and open mouthed, months of longing and sadness and aching pouring out of her at once, fingers weaving up into the tendrils of Skye's hair that just brush the nape of her neck, and something sears through her, warming up every part of her body momentarily. When she pauses for breath, eyes fluttering open, she sees Skye's eyes wide open, staring at her.

"So. You and Fitz?"

Jemma’s hands are looped around Skye’s neck.

"Yeah." Jemma pauses, kissing her and smiling. "It wasn't him."

Skye opens her mouth to say something, then stops, her gaze fixed on the hands that have moved their way down to her shoulders.

"You're not doing it."

\--

Jemma thinks afterwards that she should've known that a kiss would be the cure, that an outpouring of love for an inhuman would overpower whatever they put in her head. But she tells herself that it was too much like a fairy tale, that she, lover of science and logic couldn't have predicted that.

And then she looks at Skye, and wonders at how the power she is radiating out of her hands isn't even the most magical thing about her, and she thinks maybe, fairy tales - with right and wrong and hard and easy and desperate sadness and true love - aren't so far from the truth after all.

**Author's Note:**

> let it be known that i had this all plotted out before the season premiere


End file.
